It really was a villainous countenance, but to Joe it seemed only weather-beaten.

'Frisco Kid was describing to him, between mouthfuls, the last sou'easter the _Dazzler_ had weathered, and Joe experienced an increasing awe for this boy who had lived so long upon the water and knew so much about it.
The captain, however, drank a glass of wine, and topped it off with a second and a third, and then, a vicious flush lighting his swarthy face, stretched out on top of his blankets, where he soon was snoring loudly.
"Better turn in and get a couple of hours' sleep," 'Frisco Kid said kindly, pointing Joe's bunk out to him.

"We 'll most likely be up the rest of the night." Joe obeyed, but he could not fall asleep so readily as the others.

He lay with his eyes wide open, watching the hands of the alarm-clock that hung in the cabin, and thinking how quickly event had followed event in the last twelve hours.

Only that very morning he had been a school-boy, and now he was a sailor, shipped on the _Dazzler_ and bound he knew not whither.